WEDNESDAY EVENING CRITIQUE AND POETRY PARTY
at the Wilson's February 21, 2007

Wednesday evening started with an intensive workshop in the Wednesday Critique tradition. Each poet reads their new work, passing out copies to the rest. Comments, are given by all poets after each reading. The poems were strong, the commentaries strong as well, and the conversation provocative.

In the right is Mary Torregossa, a Wednesday Critique host along with Don Campbell, her visit to our new location.

The dinner them this time was Asian Indian. A wonderful Saag (frozen in) by friend poet/musician Harry Bower of San Francisco was the basis for the meal. Kath followed his great recipe of potatos/baked with garum masala for the saag accompaniment with great success. Also a dahl with red kidney beans and black lentils in a curry tomato sauce with saffron rice.

Rick showed an Asian Indian bansuri from his collection and then went on to present a program of rennaissance flute music. The six hole bansuri is thin bamboo, made in this century in the thousand year tradition. The rennaissance flutes are made from boxwood and fruitwoods, and also have six open holes. The renaissance flute has a narrower bore and smaller holes. The contrast in sound in the long similarly sized wooded flutes is striking. The renaissance flutes in Rick's collection are historical copies based original instruments of the sixteenth century.

Here Rick is playing a bass renaissance flute, while Asincion is playing tenor. The flutes were made in consorts of different sizes. Rick and our friend Asuncion Ojeda played medieval and rennaissance flute duets, and Kath accompanied the last fanfare piece on drum. Percussion was often used in renaissance dances and festival pieces.

Our guest musician, Flutist Asuncion Ojeda is an elementary instrumental music teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District, and her performing life gets fairly evenly divided among the modern, baroque, and renaissance flutes. Most recently, she has performed with Harmonia Baroque Players, the Nimbus Chamber Orchestra, and ensembleGreen. Her principal teachers on the period instruments have been Janet Beazley, Sherril Wood and Kim Pineda. She holds degrees from California State University Northridge and the California Institute of the Arts, and she is currently a doctoral candidate in the Music Education department at the University of Southern California. She played with Rick, Harry Bower, and Sherril Wood in their recent concert for the Southern California Early Music Socieety, illustrating the history of the flute.